The Top-to-Bottom list is part of Michigan's school accountability system which ranks schools on their student performance in mathematics, reading, writing, science and social studies and graduation rate data (for high schools). School performance components include student achievement, improvement and achievement gaps between the highest and lowest scoring 30 percent of students in each school.

This list provides valuable information on the performance of Michigan’s public schools and identifies areas of both strength and challenge. It is also used to determine:

Reward Schools, based on the top 5% of schools in the ranking as well as the schools with the highest improvement values from this list. Beating the Odds schools, which are those schools either outperforming their expected ranking or outperforming other similarly-situated schools, are also Reward Schools.

Focus Schools, based on the achievement gap component of this list.

Priority (formerly Persistently Lowest Achieving), Schools based on the bottom 5% of this list.

All schools are included in the ranking if they have two years of assessment data for 30 or more full academic year students in two or more tested subjects.

These measurements were developed in conjunction with a diverse set of education stakeholders throughout the 2010-2011 school year as part of Michigan's approved federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) flexibility waiver.